Two writers debate the pros and cons of indie-rock/Afropop sensations Vampire Weekend, who are making their St. Louis debut on September 10

The pace of the blog-driven indie-rock world has reached a point where sometimes a backlash will set in almost before the frontlash gets rolling. New York's Vampire Weekend vaulted into the buzzosphere on the strength of a three-song 2007 demo, cemented its golden-child status thanks to a glowing Pitchfork Media review for its self-titled debut album, and trod the exalted boards of the Saturday Night Live stage — all in less time than it took to record a single snare drum track on Chinese Democracy.

Back in 2006, blazer-clad frontman Ezra Koenig described Vampire Weekend's music as "a fusion of happy world music with Western, New England preppiness" to the Columbia University undergrad blog. (The band met at Columbia when its members were all students there.) But after its debut was released in January, plenty of skeptics immediately sniped at the band's self-conscious combination of indie-pop melodies, Afropop sonics and rich-pop aesthetics. This balanced the multitude of converts, like Pitchfork reviewer Nitsuh Abebe, who thought Vampire Weekend made "one of the most refreshing and replayable indie records in recent years."

In advance of the band's show on Wednesday, September 10, we asked bitter, aging punk rocker Jason Toon to make the anti-Vamps case, while music school dropout Ryan Wasoba takes up the defense.

Steven Brahms

Vampire Weekend: Will have the caviar before its polo match.

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Jason Toon: Rich kids ripping off poor kids' music is a tradition as old as the gramophone. And it's produced some pretty great music at times. But Vampire Weekend's Afropop swipes represent a qualitative leap into new territory for a couple of reasons. First, the gap between creators and appropriators has never been so wide. We're talking about the music of the poorest people on the planet, played by people who are among the richest on the planet. That might not be so off-putting if it wasn't for the second reason: Nowhere does Vampire Weekend seem to recognize its shaky position. Eyes may roll when Mick Jagger tries to howl like a sharecropper or Peter Gabriel swans around in a dashiki. But at least those guys tried to show some kind of solidarity with the originators of those sounds. (Or had the decency to fake it.) Far from being intrepid cross-cultural explorers, Vampire Weekend reduces Afropop to one more bauble in a rich kid's toy box, along with the "devastating backstrokes" and "shiny, shiny cufflinks" it sings about, or the sailboats and chandeliers on their record covers.

Ryan Wasoba: Vampire Weekend's yacht-club fascinations may be the most immediately unlikable aspect of the group, but the shtick is at least honest. Most fortunate sons in rock & roll downplay their affluence, like the trust-fund kids of Animal Collective, who disguise themselves as crusty noise punks, for the sake of furthering the misconception that only the disadvantaged are licensed to make great art. The culture police throw up red flags if some rich white kids use Ivy League resources to study arranging, engineering and mixing, and then focus these skills into a critically acclaimed, Afropop-influenced indie rock record reminiscent of Paul Simon's Graceland instead of becoming lawyers. Furthermore, the stylistic inaccuracies that keep Vampire Weekend from completely aping the Afropop genre (the Fruity-Loops bleeps in "One," the Wes Anderson movie strings of "M79") are also the quirks that keep its tunes accessible for fans of modern indie pop. Those quick to hate seem to be incapable of separating the band's concept from its music. Perhaps the most telling aspect of the backlash is how many detractors begin sentences with "They have some good songs, but...."

JT: Well, they do have a couple of decent songs, but let's talk about this "honest" thing for a minute. There's presumably a lot more to the members of Vampire Weekend than a pair of neatly pressed khakis. They're clearly well-educated, cosmopolitan guys who, at the very least, have listened to a lot of music. An "honest" image could have taken any number of directions and still been honest. If its boarding-school aesthetic is a conscious choice (which it clearly is), it's fair to talk about what motivated that particular choice. From interviews, I get the impression that those polos and loafers evoke a lighthearted, carefree and wry — but essentially happy — mood to the Vamps. Problem is, for some of us, it's a party that we're not invited to. It feels more like a celebration of privilege than anything to do with our lives.

It's not that meaningful art can't be made with this upper-class Northeastern milieu as its subject matter. But, say, J.D. Salinger and F. Scott Fitzgerald took those particular anxieties and emotions and made them universal. That's what I feel is lacking in Vampire Weekend: any reason why, exactly, we should care that Blake's got a new face.

As for "separating the concept from the music," I'm sympathetic to the argument that Vampire Weekend was sort of ambushed by notoriety, and is being judged by standards most young bands never have to meet. But I'm also of the opinion that, if you want to score points with a crafted image, you also have to accept the penalties. It's just not "honest" (heh heh) to say, "Hey, check out our distinctive style, but if you don't like it, well, never mind, just focus on the music." Music, pictures, interviews, videos, PR — it's all one persona-package now, and it all matters. That's what keeps promo photographers and one-sheet writers in business.